The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has warned Governor Ayodele Fayose to stop maligning former Governor Kayode Fayemi over his inability to pay workers’ salaries.
The APC said blaming the former governor for purportedly plunging the state into debts is a wicked manipulation of the ignorance of the people to justify “an unconscionable and mindless treatment of Ekiti workers while Fayose enjoys lavish life”.
Praising Ekiti State workers for their steadfast resolve to continue their strike over Fayose’s deceitful way to deny them their entitlement, the spokesman of the APC, Taiwo Olatunbosun, explained that just like in 2003 during his first term, “Fayose is here again with his lies with intent to defraud”.
Fayose had during his last weekend media chat blamed Fayemi for taking loans that would last till 2036 for full repayment.
He said deductions from Federal Allocation for debt payments had left the state with a peanut not enough to pay salary.
But reacting in a statement in Ado-Ekiti, Olatunbosun accused the governor of insincerity and employing the ignorance of the people to deceive Ekiti State workers over the financial status of the state.
He said Fayose had at different times given several figures as loans taken by Fayemi to deceive the people in order to hide his plans for the misapplication and misappropriation of Ekiti State money, noting that such was his conduct in 2003 before he was impeached in 2006 over alleged sundry financial crimes.
“Let us thank Governor Niyi Adebayo’s Commissioner for Finance, Bayo Aina, who foiled Fayose’s lie in 2003 when he (Aina) wrote to the House of Assembly of which I was a member, debunking Fayose’s claim that it would take 15 years to pay back the loan taken by Adebayo, which he first put at N5 billion and later increased to N8 billion,” Olatunbosiun explained.
He added that instead of alleged debt left by Adebayo, Fayose met surplus of N1.7 billion in 2003, but which he never explained to Ekiti State people until the N1.3 billion poultry project fraud emerged, over which he was impeached and is still facing criminal charges in court by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
Olatunbosun said: “The Adewale Omirin-led House of Assembly approved for Fayose to take N2b Central Bank loan for artisans and small scale traders, but up till now, he has not given one naira to anybody.
“He deceived the workers that April federal allocation is N700 million even though the Federal Ministry of Finance figure as published in the newspapers indicated that Ekiti collected N1.08 billion and you wonder what the governor did to the balance of N300m.
“He has so far collected about N20 billion loans which he would not disclose to Ekiti people. These include the N9.6 billion bailout cash and another N10 billion taken from another bank while he also denied collecting refunds on federal roads and misapplied N2 billion Ecological Fund cash which he denied collecting for a long time until our party applied for FOI Law to get the fact in the Fund’s Office in Abuja.
“He paid one month salary from N9.6 billion bailout and nobody knows what he did with the balance the same way that no one knows what he does with the fresh N10 billion loan and the interest it generates in the secret account he keeps the money after vowing several times never to borrow a naira to run his government, even as he continues to give inconsistent figures to workers as the state internally-generated revenue, including lying against the workers that they are part of revenue sharing after collection from Abuja.
“While Fayemi borrowed for development purposes, which can be seen in roads and other development structures across the state, Fayose keeps padding, spending Ekiti money on projects rehabilitation fraudulently over-priced and given to his friends and cronies while Ekiti workers suffer.”
Describing as provocative Fayose’s habit of asking workers to bear with him on empty stomach, while regularly taking his monthly N250 million security vote without funding the security agencies, Olatunbosun challenged the governor to publish the state audited accounts stating the state’s internally generated revenue profile like Fayemi did periodically and stop blackmailing the former governor over “fraud-motivated instincts to exploit the ignorance of the people to a fraudulent advantage”.